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The snowball effect is something that everyone in the custom car and truck community is familiar with. The build starts with the goal in mind to make a simple cruiser, but somewhere along the line it snowballs out of control into a complete custom build. It really does start off innocently enough, a custom dash, some different wheels, an aftermarket grill, but before you know it, you’ve gone custom everywhere.
This truly is one of the cleanest C10 builds that we've seen. The firewall and engine bay are so clean that it's unreal.
That’s really how this 1966 Chevy C10 project started. The owner, Randy Marston of British Columbia, Canada, initially wanted a simple and reliable cruiser. What he ended up instead, is a badass, and one-of-a-kind custom rig. To find out more details on the build, we got in touch with Roger Burman, owner of the shop that put it together, Lakeside Rods and Rides, out of Rockwell City, Iowa.
They found this truck at the Goodguys swap meet in Arizona. “It wasn’t bad,” Roger explained. “We bought two front fenders and one door, but the box was really nice on it. Most of them are beat to death, but this one was really nice.” So, with a clean truck to start with and an idea in mind, they went forward with a build that would extend further than anyone expected it to.
It started really clean, and that always makes for an easier build. It just adds steps to have to repair rust and damage before you can get to the custom work.
The whole build sits squarely on a Roadster Shop chassis with an independent front and rear suspension that uses air bags all around. The engine is an LS7 with a Kenne Bell supercharger connected to a Bowler Transmissions 4L80E automatic, and the rearend is a Roadster Shop housing with 3.73 Strange gearing.
The entire front face has been redesigned as well. “I used ’67 C10 headlight bezels on it, but everything else is custom made,” explained Roger. “Basically, I thought it would be kind of cool to have a sort of transformation from a ’66 to a ’67.” He thought right.
The custom front section on this truck is really impressive.
Both the front and rear bumpers are made from ’69 Camaro bumpers, and they heavily modified the hood section on the truck. “We wanted just the top to open,” Roger explained. “We didn’t want the hood opening to take half the fenders up with them.
Randy didn’t want to have the big inner fenders showing or the tops of the tires when you open the hood.” The hood now opens like a regular, modern hood, but it’s just the center section.
The top pictures show how the hood opens as one flat piece, like a modern car or truck. The bottom two show the stunning rearend and rear suspension system through the access hatch in the bed.
Among a huge list of other exterior modifications that they made to this truck, the door handles and locks are gone, they fixed up the pinch seem on the rockers, and the added flush-fit glass on the front and rear windows. The look they created is a really subtle blend of classic and modern style.
The interior of this truck really shines. They were going for a look that would be similar to that of a modern Silverado, and they nailed it home with a great mixture of classic Chevy style and modern Chevy comfort.
They’ve also changed the wiper system over to a cable-driven system since they have the brake master cylinder under the dash to keep the engine bay clean. They also added Vintage Air climate control, a custom Dakota Digital dash, and of course, all custom interior to fit the rest of the all-out custom build. It’s really just gorgeous inside and out.
